About James Boyle
Like all of us, James is a product of his environment.
He was raised in a religious/spiritual family and that spirituality pervades most of his work. He even attended a Catholic Seminary for a year before deciding the priesthood was not for him.
James’ father worked for the phone company as he was growing up, which was much like growing up in a military family. The company transferred his family from town to town every couple of years. By the time he’d graduated high school, they’d moved twenty times. He attended nine different schools in five cities and three states.
He lived mainly in North Dakota until he was eight, since then he lived in Washington and Oregon, moving to Gold Beach when he was sixteen. He finds that the landscape of the Pacific Northwest has done more to influence him than nearly everything else. Its vast forests, rugged mountains, seascapes and sparse population inspire recollections of what the pioneers first fell in love with a century and a half ago. From his house, he can still hike fifteen minutes and spend the entire day without seeing another human being. And the possibility exists that he could see sasquatch.
One of his goals is to build a dark fiction landscape of the Pacific Northwest, much like Stephen King has done with Maine. A landscape of dark possibilities.
When he was a child living in Bismark, North Dakota, his parents took James to Fort Abraham Lincoln, the fort Gen. Custer left on his last, fateful campaign and the Knife River Village, the restored ruins of a Mandan village. Now forty years later, the memories have faded, but not the memory of the impression the visits made on a small boy. Years later, he read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. After that he devoured everything he could find about Native American history and culture. He came to have a deep sympathy for the Native peoples’ doomed resistance to the white culture and admiration for their cultural connection to the natural world around them. The dominant culture seeks to change and subjugate a nature it sees as an enemy; the Natives sought to live within the natural world as one part of a dynamic whole.
When he was eighteen, James was diagnosed with a severe case of scoliosis. After graduating early from Gold Beach High Schoolin 1978, he underwent surgery that fused most of his lumber spine. Six months in a body cast later, he continued on to college at the University of Oregon, where he earned a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. Now, forty years after the surgery, his body is beginning to break down a bit. So if you see him and notice he seems to be bent and twisted, you know why.
When he’s not writing, James has worked in the restaurant industry as a cook and as a manager, mostly in the Eugene/Springfield area, but most lately at Gold Beach’s Port Hole Cafe. Looking back, he seems to have a lot of scenes set in restaurants. He enjoy reading, playing an occasional video game, taking his dog for exploratory hikes along the beach or river. He is happily single. (it’s so much less complicated.)
You can visit James’ website at www.jamesboylewrites.com.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Jesus—of course. As perhaps the most famous human to ever walk around, he’d have to be invited. Plus, he’s the ultimate pacifist and humanist. There are also a ton of questions I’d like to ask him.
Plato—the father of the Western philosphical tradition. He would make a wonderful moderator.
Thomas Jefferson—one of the founders of the American republic. He was a voice for the common man, though he was a member of the landed gentry in Virginia. He championed freedom, but owned slaves. A fascinating individual.
Adolf Hitler—despite the depravity of his methods and ideas, he was a brilliant politician, who transformed pre-war Germany from a chaotic, demoralized mess into a unified world power. He rose to the heights of power and sunk to the depths of insanity. I would love to hear a discussion of human rights between Adolf and Jesus.
Napoleon—another brilliant politician and military mind. He took France amid the chaos of the revolution and turned it into the greatest empire Europe had seen since Rome. He also bankrupted his country and sacrificed most of its young men in that quest for glory. Another interesting person.
The Event:
Would be a camp out at a remote spot near a river. Other than the six of us and few people to handle the food, there would be no neighbors to worry about should the conversation grow heated, which is a good possibility, considering the guests.
The Menu:
Lamb, skewered and roasted over an open fire.
Potatoes, sliced and fried with onions and garlic in olive oil. An iron skillet should be used..
Corn roasted on the cob, also over the fire
A salad of mixed field greens, with sliced radishes, mushrooms, olives, and sunflower seeds will be offered to those who wish it.
Red wine and Bavarian ale will be served with dinner.
Dessert will be strawberry tarts.
Post Dinner:
The entire party is encouraged to gather around the campfire where the discussion will continue concerning political and military theory, the rights of man, the role of government, and possible solutions to problems confronting the modern world. Brandy will be served. Cigarettes, cigars and pipes are welcome.
About Ni’il the Awakening
When several people are brutally killed in the town of Placerton, on the isolated Oregon coast, most locals think a rogue bear or cougar is roaming the forested hills near town. Police Chief Dan Connor is not so sure. He has witnessed some very strange things lately, such as disembodied voices, muttering a strange foreign language and an old Indian man who seems to be near every crime scene, but disappears before he can be questioned.
Dan’s investigation takes him to the local Sihketunnai Indians and their legend of the Ni’il, magical shamans charged with maintaining the balance between humans and the natural world. According to the elders, one of the Ni’il is responsible for the murders and intends to kill everyone in the community. It is Dan’s job to stop it.
It sounds unbelievable, but is the only explanation that fit the facts.
As a violent Pacific storm crashes ashore, cutting the town off from the outside world, Dan finds himself entering a strange world of myth and magic that was not covered in his police training. He must use all his wits and new-found powers to save himself and his community from the Ni’il.
